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Expulsion class gives students another chance

The Star had unprecedented access to the Toronto District School Board's long-term support programs for expelled students, recently spending a week with students. Their names have been changed because some can't be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Some photographs have been digitally altered to obscure faces.

Nothing comes easy for Breezy, who gets help from teacher Tim Iacono with a science problem. The Grade 11 student is also prepping for a literacy test. "I'm just trying to turn my life around," he says. (JIM RANKIN / TORONTO STAR)

The Star had unprecedented access to the Toronto District School Board's long-term support programs for expelled students, recently spending a week with students. Their names have been changed because some can't be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Some photographs have been digitally altered to obscure faces.

It's group therapy time, and the expelled students at this Scarborough school are oozing lack of interest.

Nine teenagers sit in a windowless room, sprawled on chairs arranged in a circle. One of them, Smiley, doodles on the blackboard, a white hood tied tightly under his chin. Some glance repeatedly at the clock. A poster of Gandhi is at the front of the room, one of Malcolm X at the back.

"You should wake up some time, be more focused," a second student offers.

"Why don't they keep track of all the good things you do in school?" blurts Smiley, who is here for fighting.

"Why do they keep track of only the negative stuff?"

Alice, a 15-year-old in tight black jeans and pink running shoes, suddenly jumps from her seat, looking squeamish. A student with sunglasses saunters to her side of the room and squishes a big bug.

Lots of creepy things were crawling about when the Toronto District School Board reopened what was once Midland Collegiate after having mothballed parts of it for eight years.

"I grew up on a farm, but there were bugs I've never seen in my life," says science teacher Becky Voll, who saw mice run around her feet when she arrived a year ago.

The students, Alice notwithstanding, don't seem to mind. For many, this is the best school they've ever had.

With a student-teaching staff ratio of 5-1, they get one-on-one teaching when they need it. There are three teachers, a teaching assistant, two youth workers, a social worker and a psychologist.

"If college was like this, I'd go to college," says a 17-year-old student, who wants to be known as Breezy Locz.

Nothing comes easy for the low-income Grade 11 student, not even bus fare. College could be a long shot. He has one hurdle to overcome this week: a province-wide literacy test.

It has Breezy worried.

'IF YOU DON'T PUSH THEIR BUTTONS, THEY DON'T BLOW UP'

There's no sign on the Midland Ave. building to indicate the expulsion school exists.

"If I tell someone I work in an expulsion school, they kind of gasp and fear for my life," Voll says. "But I feel safe here. You can really build a relationship and trust with these students."

Midland is one of 33 "safe school" programs for expelled or suspended students run by the TDSB. Most arose out of reforms to the provincial Education Act implemented 15 months ago. They oblige Ontario schools to provide alternative programs for any student suspended more than five days.

The changes were made after parents complained that students from at-risk neighbourhoods and certain visible minority groups were being disproportionately suspended and expelled.

Of the 12 expelled high school students at Midland this week, most are racial minorities. Alice is the only girl. Another eight students are in a class for students "excluded" from schools, largely for safety reasons. Some face criminal charges.

Most had done things that, by law, lead to automatic suspension and possible expulsion: possessing or using a weapon, physical or sexual assault, drug trafficking, robbery or giving alcohol to a minor.

"You should see these kids on the intakes," says English teacher Tim Iacono. "They've got their heads down – they're heavy.

"Sometimes the parents cry in the interviews. I mean – `You've been expelled, you're going to an expelled program, you can't go to any school in Ontario, this is your last chance.' They just hear this and they think, `Wow, I'm a step away from jail, pretty much.'"

The teaching day is four hours, with a half-hour break where the kids get a free lunch. The doors are kept locked. Students can't leave the school, or go to the bathroom, without permission. At the end of the day, a teacher escorts them off school grounds.

Yet, the days unfold quietly, with students working at their desks or in front of computers.

Students have to meet behavioural and academic criteria set by their principals before they can return to regular school. For some, the academic bar is too high, Wiggins says. They are, in effect, being banished forever.

Breezy risks falling into that category. He's working hard to stop being a bully. But he continues to struggle academically.

A lanky, soft-spoken teenager with light-coloured hair, Breezy was expelled for robbery. "I got accused of taking some kid's lunch money – it never happened."

He doesn't have much good to say about regular school. "You just sit there and do work and look at the clock – it's kind of boring. It's the same thing you're doing when you're in jail." Breezy spent nine hours in a holding cell recently for a robbery charge unrelated to his expulsion.

He started at Habitat for Humanity, a program where expelled students work on home building sites. But the early starts, outdoor work and heavy lifting were not for Breezy. He ended up at Midland late last October.

"I'm just trying to turn my life around," he says.

Midland's mantra – "There are no bad students, just bad choices" – is proclaimed on posters. But many, like Breezy, have a long history of suspensions. He was thrown out, as he puts it, "many a times, many a times," starting in Grade 3.

It's typical background for those at Midland, Iacono says.

"All of our students have fallen through the cracks of the regular system in one way or another."

'YOU TELL THEM TO DO THEIR MATH AND THEY SAY, "MY BROTHER OVERDOSED LAST NIGHT" '

Iacono is teaching a film class. He says his students have "incredible visual memory."

As an example of an over-the-shoulder shot, Iacono shows a scene from Martin Scorsese's
Raging Bull
. Robert De Niro, as disturbed boxer Jake LaMotta, orders his oddball brother, played by Joe Pesci, to punch him in the face.

"I want you to hit me with everything you got. I want you to f---ing lay me out," De Niro shouts.

The students are riveted. They're learning, so Iacono tolerates discussion that strays off-topic.

"Hey Smiley," says an 18-year-old student, an amateur rapper who dubs himself Young Fresh. "What would you want more? Money, power or respect?"

"Money," Smiley says.

"If you have power, you can get money real quick," Young Fresh replies.

"Yeah, but how do you get power?" Smiley says.

"You have to know people – connections."

"What did
Scarface
say?" Iacono asks, bringing the conversation back to movies with Brian De Palma's gangster classic about the drug world. "First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women."

The students get it. Their lives may not be as violent as Jake LaMotta's or
Scarface
's Tony Montana, but they aren't pretty.

"You tell them to do their math and they say, `My brother overdosed last night,'" Wiggins relates.

One day, Anthony, a 15-year-old expelled for robbing a student, was explaining to friends during lunch why he missed classes the day before: "My mother came home drunk and didn't wake me up."

"My area is full of potheads and crackheads, it's crazy," says Smiley, who lives near Warden Ave. and Kingston Rd.

"They always seem to try and rob people. I just see so much drama. I seen these two guys beating up this old guy across the street at two in the morning."

One student who arrived from Newfoundland three years ago described the give and take of Toronto street fights this way: "People here haven't grown balls. In Newfoundland it's punch – punch. Here it's punch – knife. Punch – gun."

Says Breezy: "When you hang around the wrong crowd, you try to show off to that crowd. If you don't do nothing they either make fun of you or bother you. So, you just end up doing this so they think you're not a little baby any more."

He often visits friends in jail – "they're crying like every single day."

He lives in the Orton Park Rd. and Lawrence Ave. E. neighbourhood and credits his father, a carpenter, with hard-nosed street tips.

"My dad told me, `If someone is bothering you, stick up for yourself, like, don't act like a little baby. If you act like a baby people are just going to keep on picking on you and picking on you every single day.' So I just listened to what my dad said and people stopped bothering me."

Did that lead to many fights?

"Yeah, every day someone else was trying to bother me. And I told them to stop and they wouldn't stop, so I just ended up blowing up on them."

His father went to his school in Scarborough to vigorously protest Breezy's expulsion.

He left with a "trespassing letter" that bans him from the school.

Breezy wants to be an example for his girlfriend and younger brother.

"I'm trying to show everyone like, without school you ain't going to have nothing in life. You're not going to go anywhere. You're just going to be a bum. You're just going to be living off welfare," he says.

"I don't want to be doing that. I want to have money, I want to have cars, I want to have a good house – I want to have a life."

'SOMEBODY IS DEAD IN THE HALLWAY'

"I haven't seen math work from you for ages," Voll says as Smiley strolls into her afternoon class.

"I haven't been here for ages," he replies.

Smiley is wearing a do-rag and sucking on a Popsicle. Take that outside, Voll tells him. "Gladly," he says and walks out.

Smiley has been at Midland six weeks. He was expelled for fighting and charged with assault – punishment he considers harsh. "Kids fight all the time in school."

He can't remember the number of times he got suspended before landing here, but guesses it's about 20. "For silly stuff," he says.

"It's a uniform school and I have my white T-shirt untucked – they're always on me about that. Other stuff like cursing in class, talking with friends in class; they send you to the office – they withdraw you for the day. I think that's stupid, you're making a little thing into a bigger thing, and we're losing more education like that. I don't find that right."

Why not stay out of trouble?

"Sometimes your peers get in the way. You just get caught up in the moment. Things happen."

Young Fresh arrives in Voll's class after a lunchtime game of basketball, hot and sweaty. He repeatedly wipes his brow.

"My brain's not working right now. I can't focus on nothing."

Maybe he could remove his winter coat and toque, Voll says.

Young Fresh had been asked to remove his coat in a morning class, but persuaded his teacher he didn't have a cool enough T-shirt underneath. Style beats comfort.

Negotiations are a big part of the school day. Students repeatedly test teachers and school rules. Teachers push the other way, striking compromises and accommodations that move the class along.

The aim is to build rapport. It's the key to dealing with challenging students, Midland staff say, the missing ingredient in many regular schools.

Voll, 31, goes with the flow. It's her first teaching job in a public school. After a year here, there's no place she would rather be.

"What's boring is a Grade 12 university (bound) class," says Voll, who previously taught in a private school. "Here, they don't hide their personality. They're funnier. They all have stories to tell, although they're not always pleasant to hear."

Breezy walks into her class, late, after Voll fails to get Young Fresh to remove his coat.

"Someone is dead in the hallway," he announces. Voll doesn't bite.

Breezy spends much of the class chewing a plastic coffee stir stick. He's having trouble concentrating. He tells Voll he's afraid if he focuses too hard on the periodic table, it will push out information in his brain about the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test, two days away.

He's up off his seat, pacing.

"When's class done?" he asks.

'OFF THEY GO, INTO THE WORLD'

Iacono preps for the test on a rainy morning. Eight expelled students will be writing it, but only four show up for prepping.

Breezy, who has failed the test once before and has been nervous about this year's attempt all week, isn't one of them.

At 33, Iacono is a tall, slim, gentle man with a shaved head. He spends his lunchtime defending his vegetarian lifestyle to the ribbing of students. He gives them respect and gets it in return.

He tells students to get a good night's sleep and to eat breakfast. The exam begins tomorrow, promptly at 9:30 a.m. and lasts five hours, twice as much time as is allotted in regular school.

He hands them last year's test and walks them through it.

A 14-year-old spends most of his time studying the label on his new Kansas City Royals baseball cap, resting on his desktop. Iacono is particularly concerned about Anthony, who has trouble sitting at his desk for any length of time.

The students stream out for lunch. Tim stands in the classroom, his hand on his forehead.

"Yeah, off they go into the world."

The next morning, seven students show up for the test.

But where's Breezy?

'I THINK MY DAY'S COMING. I'VE STARTED CHANGING'

"No talking, no whispering, and no sign language," Iacono says, at the start of the provincial test. "If you do, I have to take the test away and however far along you are, that's the grade you get."

Anthony is done in 45 minutes. "It's not a good sign," Iacono says.

The school gets a phone call. It's Breezy's mother. She doesn't have bus fare to send her son to school. It would take a couple of hours to walk. She's desperate, and so is Breezy.

Becky Voll and teaching assistant Vanessa Barker head off by car to pick him up. The test gets written.

Breezy will find out later this month whether he passed. He is determined to work his way back into a regular school and graduate.

"Yeah because, see, if I were to have kids, I don't want my kids to say, `Oh, my father was a bum in school.' That's why I want to get my credits – so I have something to show my kids.

"Everyone has some time to change. I think my day's coming. I've started changing."

'SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST, TIC-TOC TILL MY TIME IS UP'

Friday afternoon each week brings a much-anticipated trip to East Metro Youth Services' violence intervention program. The students crowd into a media lab and get access to new iMacs, digital cameras and a recording studio.

Today's assignment is to write 16 bars of lyrics to a piece of music each student lifts from YouTube, and then sing and record it in the studio. For inspiration, they listen to "Heartless," a tune from American rapper Kanye West, lamenting being spurned by a lover.

"Stop crying. Get over it," says a student, as others murmur and grunt their agreement.

A local hip hop artist, C-Jewlz, gives them writing tips. He is 19 and 10 credits short of a high school diploma.

Speak from a "street mentality," he advises. Create strong images. "It's like when you introduce yourself to a girl; you can't come across as weak."

The students discuss themes and search for the right word as they write what is essentially poetry, albeit more Tupac than Yeats.

"Instead of teaching Robert Frost, which I do on occasion, we teach Tupac Shakur," Iacono says. "Now, the content may not be there but you'd be surprised about how many poetic devices come through in hip hop."

In the recording studio, Young Fresh is meticulous about getting the rap down. He stumbles on the first take, gets angry with himself, and nails the second. He calls his song "Running" and delivers it to the tune with the same name by Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. – two rappers shot to death.

Living life in these cold streets

I'm getting cold feet so don't approach me

It might get toasty ...

Survival of the fittest, tic-toc til my time is up

... Still tryna put an end to me, I don't even care

I'm reckless, I'm nauseous, I'm lonely, I'm scared

I'm still waiting for this angel to take me to da other side

Take me from the streets ...

I'm tired of these struggles, tired of losin' loved ones ...

Not knowin' which way I'm runnin, what can

You say to me?

I ain't got nothing to lose, homie ...

EPILOGUE

Since the
Star
monitored the program, Wiggins says Midland has received new students with mental health problems.

"Does a kid with a mental health issue belong here?" he asks. "Can you expel someone from school because they have a mental health issue? I don't know. Is that fair?"

Breezy found a part-time job working for travelling carnivals that set up in parking lots. Then his grandmother died. He became depressed and unmotivated. He quit his job and is struggling at expulsion school.

"He's got erratic sleep patterns, so he can't get up in the mornings. And his dad's trying to convince him that it's important. But he's struggling to get credits and saying, `So, why should I come?'"

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